Online marketplaces enable customers to visit one or more network sites from any corner of the globe, to view and evaluate items, and to place orders for the purchase of such items over the Internet. Initially, orders for items that were placed at online marketplaces over the Internet were fulfilled at the original locations of vendors (or manufacturers, merchants or other sources of the items), from which the items would be shipped to customers via first-class mail or another common carrier. Today, however, many online marketplaces operate in association with one or more fulfillment centers. A fulfillment center is a facility, a warehouse or another like structure that is constructed in a distributed, centralized location and adapted to receive items from sources of the items (e.g., vendors or other fulfillment centers). Fulfillment centers may include stations for receiving shipments of items, for storing such items, and/or for preparing such items for delivery to customers. When an order for the purchase of one or more items stored in a fulfillment center is received from a customer, the ordered items may be retrieved from spaces or areas in which such items are stored, and prepared for delivery to the customer, e.g., by packing the ordered items into one or more appropriate containers with a sufficient type and amount of dunnage, and delivering the containers to a destination designated by the customer.
Aerial vehicles such as airplanes or helicopters are commonly used to transport people or cargo from an origin to one or more destinations by air. Additionally, loading passengers or cargo onto an aerial vehicle at an origin, and unloading passengers or cargo from the aerial vehicle at a destination, typically requires the use and support of one or more machines, buildings, facilities and/or structures, as well as the assistance of numerous personnel. For this reason, aerial vehicles typically depart from and return to immovable facilities or structures such as airports, helipads, heliports, jetports or the like, which may, like fulfillment centers, occupy substantially large areas or include one or more large buildings and connections to various transportation systems. For example, Denver International Airport occupies a land area that is more than twice the size of New York's Manhattan Island.
Moreover, performing planned or unplanned maintenance on an aerial vehicle requires the aerial vehicle to be taken out of service for extended durations. For example, depending on its size, or a length of time since its most recent inspection, a typical inspection of an aerial vehicle may require tens or hundreds of man-hours in order to be completed. Even where maintenance results in a determination that the integrity of an aerial vehicle is sound, and that the aerial vehicle is operating in a safe and satisfactory manner, or that the aerial vehicle requires a simple repair, the aerial vehicle must still be taken out of service in order to arrive at that determination, or to complete the repair. Every hour in which an aerial vehicle is out-of-service is an hour in which the aerial vehicle is not providing value.